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Voices from the Field: How Mothers With PTSD Raise Trauma-Prone Children

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New York University researcher Claude Chemtob has found that mothers' PTSD is just as important as depression in predicting their children's mental health.

Length: 4:16

Transcript

NCFY: Welcome to Voices from the Field, a podcast series from the Family and Youth Services Bureau. Claude Chemtob is a Research Professor of Psychiatry at New York University and Director of the Family Trauma Research Program. In a recently published paper, Chemtob and two colleagues put forth evidence that children whose mothers suffer from PTSD or depression tend to experience trauma at a greater than average rate. Inspired by his earlier work with the children of mothers who had been traumatized by the events of September 11, Chemtob studied 97 mothers and their young children ages three to five.

CLAUDE CHEMTOB: What this study suggests is that – this is quite important – is that if a mother has PTSD, her kids will be more at-risk to being exposed to traumatic events than if she doesn’t. Furthermore, we learned that when a mother had PTSD and depression together, it tended to be much more impactful on child behavior problems than if they had either PTSD or depression. Everybody in the family sort of shares in the impact of these disorders, not just the parent, but also the effect on the parent gets translated into an effect on the children.

NCFY: So how can youth and family workers learn from these findings? Chemtob says a knowledge of the signs and symptoms of PTSD is a good first step.

CHEMTOB: Obviously, one way is to know something about PTSD and to understand what some of the clinical symptoms are associated. One of them being, for example, an increased willingness to get angry and aggressive. And the good news here is that a number of very brief PTSD screens and depression screens have been developed in the field that involve three to six questions. And so they’re extremely brief. And if somebody systematically uses them, then it helps to flag the need for further inquiry. So our recommendation is to always use a screening tool and to have a procedure whereby you screen everyone and you follow-up with those who are positive on the screening tool.

NCFY: But collaborating with primary care physicians who see mothers more often when children are still young and most vulnerable can improve services as well.

CHEMTOB: Most mothers take their children until the age of five to the pediatrician for well‑baby visits. So if one thinks that there might be an association of maternal PTSD and risk for child maltreatment, potentially one terrific place to start intervening is through the primary care system.

Since both PTSD and depression predict child maltreatment, the fact that people have been arguing for screening for maternal depression, and it’s a good argument, should also have added to it that it’s very important to screen for maternal PTSD in addition. And that's for several reasons.

One is that mothers who have PTSD and depression together are at the highest risk of hurting the kids. And the second is that in the presence of PTSD, depression is less important in identifying the list for child maltreatment.

NCFY: For more information on trauma informed care and the latest research in the youth work best practices, visit the National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth, online at NCFY.acf.hhs.gov.